Street Fight Daily: Facebook Buys Moves, Lyft Puts Capital to Work

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology

By Buying Moves, Facebook Acquires High-Value Passive Location Technology (GigaOm)
Facebook acquired mobile fitness and tracking app Moves for an undisclosed sum Thursday, promising to “work on building and improving their products.” The big asset that Moves brings to Facebook is a mature passive location product that could help the social media platform further refine its location data — and, in turn, its ad network.

Openings and New Hires at Thinknear, Twitter and Verizon (Street Fight)
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, new hires and jobs at Factual, Angie’s List, Local Yokel Media, Facebook, Mediative and hibu.

Lyft Puts New Megabucks to Work: Launches in 24 Cities, Cuts Prices Again, Drops All Fees (Recode)
Ride-sharing service Lyft has $250 million in the bank in new funding. Today it is launching in 24 more American cities, including Albuquerque, N.M.; Buffalo, N.Y.; and Oklahoma City, Okla. And on top of system-wide price cuts of up to 20 percent earlier this month, Lyft is chopping off an additional 10 percent in all its existing markets.

Berg Insight: Mobile Location-Based Advertising will be worth $14.8B in 2018 (FierceWireless)
According to a new research report from the analyst firm Berg Insight, the total value of the global real-time mobile location-based advertising and marketing market will grow from $1.6 billion in 2013 at a compound annual growth rate of 54 percent to $14.8 billion in 2018. Location-based advertising and marketing will thus represent around 7 percent of digital advertising, or 2 percent of the total global ad spend for all media.

Square Plans Major Staff Expansion in NYC and a New East Coast HQ (GigaOm)
Square will open a new New York City satellite headquarters this summer that will house up to 350 employees – and it plans to fill it. Square said on Thursday that it’s aggressively hiring engineers, designers, support representatives and other staff in what has become one of Square’s most important global markets.

Digital Mapping May Be Nokia’s Hidden Jewel (New York Times)
On Friday, the company completes the sale of its beleaguered handset business to Microsoft for $7.5 billion. The deal’s closing puts a spotlight on Nokia’s efforts to map the entire world digitally that could prove to be the company’s hidden gem — or at least emerge as a compelling, multibillion-dollar takeover target.

PayPal is Piloting a Wireless Smartwatch Payment System (Fast Company)
The pilot, which PayPal is trying out in its on-campus Starbucks in San Jose, pairs Bluetooth Low Energy beacons with Samsung Galaxy smart wearables. With PayPal’s new app for the Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatch and the Gear Fit fitness band, patrons receive a push notification when they walk into the area covered by a PayPal Beacon installed inside.

NY Attorney General Tells Pando: Current Hotel Laws Were Made With Airbnb in Mind (Pando)
Earlier this week, the New York state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman submitted an affidavit claiming that, according to an unofficial count, two-thirds of New York City’s Airbnb listings are illegal. This was meant to bolster his subpoena for Airbnb’s records. Airbnb’s response maintained that Scheiderman’s request is out of line and that he is, in effect, bullying the company.